USC players Jacob Cofie, Ezra Ausar reveal what Top 25 rankings mean to them

USC basketball players Jacob Cofie and Ezra Ausar want to be recognized for their play as a team and be in Monday’s AP Poll. Last week, the Trojans received votes in the rankings.

Now at 10-1, they both said it’s important to them and the team. What that means in the grand scheme of things remains to be seen.

But one thing’s for sure, Eric Musselman’s crew is off to a great start, especially after a bad loss to Washington. But the USC stars were honest after a 68-61 win over Washington State.

“I’ve never been ranked in college before, so it matters to me,” Ausar said. “It seals your position as to where you stand, statistically. But at the end of the day, we’re trying to accomplish our one goal to beat the team in front of us every night. Obviously, the ranking will come with the games that we win. We gain respect from other teams as well.”

Ausar put up 13 points, five rebounds and two assists in the win. Cofie had a big time game, putting up 21 points, 10 rebounds and two assists.

“I feel like we were ranked for a bit, but we lost it,” Cofie said. “We had that game. Losing our ranking doesn’t define us, but we deserve it, and we’re going to get back to where we want to be.”

Musselman noted USC needed a performance like that from Cofie. It could get them back into the top 25 of course.

“Tonight was super important,” Musselman said postgame. “We made a conscious effort to go to him. He went out and had a good game, but he was much more aggressive tonight at the rim. We needed him to be an aggressive offensive player, and he was great on the glass, too.”

As far as taking positives away from the win, Musselman noted USC is firing off on all cylinders, at least on offense. We’ll see if that leads them to the top 25.

“Our offensive metrics are phenomenal, and our defensive metrics – especially the last six games – have not been good,” Musselman said. “But we’ve been scoring at such a high rate that we’ve gotten by winning games with our offense. And tonight, the real positive is we had to grind the game out when we weren’t scoring and shooting very well.”